Technical Documentation

November 6, 2013Comments are off

Overview

The client is an industry leader in providing training and consulting services to public housing authorities.

The Problem

The client worked with one of their clients to develop the Asset Manager application. Designed for housing communities, the Asset Manager is a web-based software application that enables individuals with various roles in public hous-ing to evaluate organizational performance and develop goals and plans for their tenants. The client did not have the internal resources or expertise to develop the required end-user documentation and decided to outsource that function to Creative Business Labs.

Our Solutions

Creative Business Labs worked closely with the client’s development team to understand the target audience of the application; understanding the target audience is key to developing effective end-user documentation. Next, Creative Business Labs worked with the application to gain in-depth knowledge of the system and how end-users would interact with it.

As is frequently the case, the Asset Manager software was going through the final phases of development while Creative Business Labs was creating the documentation. Such an effort requires close coordination between the software development team and the documentation team, both to ensure that new features and software changes are incorporated and to minimize any rework. The Creative Business Labs project manager worked closely with the client’s project manager to ensure that such coordination was taking place.

The Asset Manager User Guide starts with an introduction to the document. It explains symbols and characters used throughout the guide and introduces the user to the Asset Manager application.

The document progresses in a logical manner depicting the steps that an end-user naturally would follow in the application. Screen images provide a visual reference of what the end-user should be seeing and callouts reference key details within the images. By using icons, images, basic instructions and references, each user, with minimal prior knowledge of the Asset Manager application, can quickly get up to speed to use the application.

Our Results

Creative Business Labs was able to keep the development of the end user documentation on track, even with software changes being made, until just before the “go live” date. This was the result of structuring the development to make updates easy to apply as well as the close coordination between the client and Creative Business Labs teams.